Alternative Competitions

Posted at April 21, 2009 // Competitions

As I have mentioned before in Mid-May my family and I will be moving our 5 horses, plus 2 borders out to our new farm, Iron Horse Farm. In order to be able to afford our beautiful place we need to make a certain amount of money each month. Our borders will cover some of the costs, but it isn’t going to be quite enough. So to defray some of the costs associated with our new farm I have been brainstorming ideas of how we can achieve this. I thought about taking on some project ponies to train and resell, but while the ponies are at our place they will cost money, and honestly I have never had to sell a horse. I am certainly capable of training a horse (I have countless ponies/horses I have trained over the years) but having to give up a horse you worked so hard to develop might be difficult for me – not to mention I have my own ponies to train. There is the option of taking on some other borders (we have 2 more open stalls), but honestly we like the idea of a “small private farm”, so its an option, but more of a last resort.

Iron Horse Farm's Large Outdoor Arena

So my final conclusion was to hold some competitions – certainly our enormous 150′ x 280′ ring will be a wonderful asset for competitions. The only drawback is that currently we have screenings put on it as a base for atleast 6 months when we can then apply a footing to it. Most serious competitors will not travel for inadequate footing – and honestly I’m not really interested in the typical hunter/jumper show – or even a dressage show. My first choice would be a mounted games competition (being that this is my discipline of choice), but again the footing will not be ready for this high-speed action yet. So I thought the perfect solution would be a gymkhana/trail class/skill challenge type event. I saw something similar to this at a horse expo this year where they took riders from all disciplines and asked them to complete a series of challenges where judges judged them on how well they completed the tasks. In my area we have a very large Parelli barn that is always interested in taking their horses to events such as this. I think it would be a great way to provide all disciplines with a competition that could hone skills, introduce their horses to new things, and just be a lot of fun to attend. Now I have to set about developing this competition – I’m determined to make it unlike anything else that is out there today – I think I have a lot of work ahead of me. Running through my mind right now is a mixture of timed events, skill completion events, and strictly fun events. Any and all suggestions are welcome – above all I want to make it a positive experience for everyone who attends, I think it should be a competition tailored more to achieving goals with your horse rather then earning a first place ribbon. If I held these once a month I think it would give people a goal to work towards – like last time my horse wouldn’t go near that ball, maybe this time he will calmly walk past it.